The industry's VIPs mingle at political galas and Super Bowl parties. Their product is available on cell phones, podcasts, and particularly the Internet _ there it's an attraction like no other, patronized by tens of millions of Americans.

Harmer is part of a cadre of anti-porn activists seeking new tactics to fight an unprecedented deluge of porn which they see as wrecking countless marriages and warping human sexuality. They are urging federal prosecutors to pursue more obscenity cases and raising funds for high-tech brain research that they hope will fuel lawsuits against porn magnates.

"We don't think it's a lost cause," said Harmer, a Utah-based auto executive and former politician who's been fighting porn for 40 years.

"It's the most profitable industry in the world," he said. "But I'm convinced we'll demonstrate in the not-too-distant future the actual physical harm that pornography causes and hold them financially accountable. That could be the straw that breaks their back."

The activists' adversary is a sprawling industry that, by some counts, offers more than 4 million porn sites on the Internet, that in the United States alone is estimated to be worth $12 billion a year. A tracking firm, comScore Media Metrix, says about 40 percent of Internet users in the United States visit adult sites each month.

Porn products are featured at popular sex expositions and retail chains such as Hustler Hollywood. Major hotels provide in-room porn, and adult film stars are now mainstream celebrities. Mary Carey attended a VIP Republican fundraiser in Washington in mid-March; Jenna Jameson's "How to Make Love Like a Porn Star" hit the best-seller lists and she hosted a racy pre-Super Bowl party in Detroit in February.

I think victims of rape, kidnapping, and murder would agree with you. Those who were brutalized by people who warped their minds with porn, and then went out to act out their fantasies. With that thought let's remember Danielle VanDamme - kidnapped, raped, and murdered by her seemingly "normal" neighbor, David Westerfield -whose mind was twisted by his fascination with porn.

Do you think it's OK for a woman to be paid to be sexually tortured with needles, nails, fire, electricity, suffocation, and whips to the point of getting welts and bleeding? How about being paid to have sex with animals? If you don't, then you don't support the pornography that's already out there and isn't being prosecuted thanks to the Clinton Administration. If you do, then I'm curious where you would draw your line, if you have any. If someone paid someone a million dollars to be murdered for the sexual gratification of others, and the person consented to being murdered, would that be OK? And even if you do think it's all OK, how do you tell when such a "performance" is consentual or coerced, or do you think that's not an issue?

For more detail on porn and the effect its widespread availability has on children, even if their parents don't consume it, check out the web sites for Frontline's American Porn (you can watch this show on the web site or read a transcript) and The Lost Children of Rockdale County (transcript and other material). It used to be that the public space was child friendly and pornography was something consumed in private. Now parents need to hide their children indoors with the TV and radio off if they want to avoid porn. I'm sorry if I think it's backwards when nice people have to be prisoners of their own home and sleazy people get to run free.

What I'd also really like to know is how many of the porn advocates in these discussions have children and, if you do, how do you keep them away from porn (or do you at all)?

Yes I know how easy it is for children to get porn, I'm part of the Internet generation. I'm only 20, and when I was 13 most guys I knew had computers and downloaded porn. It probably isn't the best thing for a kid but nobody I know turned out to be a sexual deviant.

You can't change the biological fact that young men are driven to have sex, even when people told them they'd go blind if they masturbated, they still did it. Your never going to keep young men from porn.

We live in a free society, unless my actions directly infringe on your rights you have no business telling me what I can do. So do a good job at parenting and your kids won't be exposed.

What I'd also really like to know is how many of the porn advocates in these discussions have children and, if you do, how do you keep them away from porn (or do you at all)?

Well, considering my 10 year-old son, once came across the word "porn," asked what it was, and then made it clear he wasn't interested in it, I'm not particularly concerned. No doubt, when he's a teenager, he'll stumble across his parents' stash, just like both his parents did.

My step-daughter turned 18 last year and a similar attitude toward her hasn't turned her into some sort of sex maniac or victim.

My basic parenting style is to explain to my children that there is an essential difference between what is appropriate behavior and interests for children, adolescents, and adults. Anything he is unsure about he is to ask one of his parents about and he knows that he will never get in trouble for asking us.

It's basically how my parents raised me on that topic and, if anything, I was too restrained in my teen and early adult years.

Yes I know how easy it is for children to get porn, I'm part of the Internet generation. I'm only 20, and when I was 13 most guys I knew had computers and downloaded porn. It probably isn't the best thing for a kid but nobody I know turned out to be a sexual deviant.

You kids have it so easy. When I was a teenager, I had to go skulking through my parents' night tables and closets to find porn. 8>)

"Was it porn that twisted the mind? Or was it porn that the person used to try to divert an already twisted mind?"

It's probably a little of both. A person who makes the decision, first of all, to view porn has made a decision to look at something twisted. It is not real - it is a distorted and twisted image. The image reinforces the desire - and maybe to "graduate" to a greater degree of depravity.

A man may stop here (viewing adult women) - or he may decide to view teenage girls. He may stop there or go on to view children.

It doesn't matter to the victims who are raped, kidnapped, or killed though. They don't get the luxury of considering the first amendment right of their attacker or of the porn industry.

And as long as their are people out there who think this stuff is harmless - there will continue to be a steady flow of innocent victims.

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